Dependency-Oriented Help As Benevolent Sexism: The Effects Of Precarious Manhood And Intimacy

On the basis of the precarious manhood theory, three studies investigated whether men would provide women more dependency-oriented help under the motivation of proving manhood, and the role that intimacy played within.Study 1 used descrambling task to activate male partipants's sense of manhood's precariousness,then exposed them to 9 everyday scenarios to examinine whether would this manhood priming result in increased dependency-oriented helping intentio ns(DOHi) to a female but not male acquaintance. Results showed that precarious manhood priming could increase male partipants' DOHi to a female acquaintance while marginally decrease their DOHi to a male acquaintance. Study 2, which consisted two sub-studies, investigate the role that intimacy played within the effect of precarious manhood on DOHi. Study 2a examine whether male participants would show more DOHi to an intimate female than a female acquaintance, and whether precarious manhood priming would increase male participants' DOHi to both an intimate female and a female acquaintance. Results showed that precarious manhood priming could increase male partipants' DOHi to a female acquaintance while had no significant effect on their DOHi to an intimate female. Study 2b exanine whether an intimate version of precarious manhood priming would only increase male participants' DOHi to an intimate female. Results showed that intimate precarious manhood priming could increase male partipants' DOHi to an intimate female while had no significant effect on their DOHi to a female acquaintance.The conclusions are as follows: (a) Men will provide more dependency-oriented help in an intimate relationship. (b) Driving by motivation to prove their manhood, men will provide more dependency-oriented help to women. (c) There is an intimate version of manhood, which men will provide more dependency-oriented help to their intimate woman to prove.